Video 2:51
Fridge art

Louisa RebgetzUpdated
Fri 12 Oct 2012, 9:34 PM AEDT

Darwin's annual Fridge Festival keeps things cool at the hottest time of year.

Transcript

LOUISA REBGETZ, PRESENTER: Its theme is being cool at the hottest time of the year in the Top End. The annual Darwin Fridge Festival at the waterfront officially kicks off tonight. And it's connecting a wide range of the community with art works from students, surgeons and gaol inmates.

NATALIE SPRITE, ORGANISER: It is so hot and everywhere you go everyone is talking about the rain and the heat and there is something fantastic about going well let's celebrate this time of year with fridges and with being cool.

BROOKE LENON, ARTIST: I like to think it's like egalitarian art, you know everyone can kind of paint an old fridge or an old white good.

LOUISA REBGETZ: It's community art using an appliance most people in the tropics are very familiar with. Darwin's waterfront has been transformed as part of the annual Fridge Festival. But this year it's gone one step further.

NATALIE SPRITE, ORGANISER: This year there's been a really huge response with the recycled art so we have gone beyond the fridge and we have these huge sculptures down here and one of them is four metres long.

LOUISA REBGETZ: This huge metal brolga has been produced from inside detention walls. The men from Berrimah prison are big contributors to this year's festival. They also made a floating shark out of recycled building materials and a series of six mosquito sculptures.

NATALIE SPRITE, ORGANISER: It is that whole thing of people who are often a bit marginalised being identified for what they have created, for something positive. Like we work with groups with mental illness, people with disabilities, people in remote areas and I love that sense of everyone coming together in the spirit of contribution and celebration and joy and humour.

LOUISA REBGETZ: More than six schools are exhibiting works. This fridge has been produced by students in Maningrida who used their own photos to make a fridge photo album.

BROOKE LENON, ARTIST: They were really keen to be involved and especially when they hear that it is going to be exhibited in Darwin somewhere - people will be walking past and be able to see what they've made. They are quite excited they get to be part of something.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Surgeons at Royal Darwin Hospital replicated their workplace inside this fridge equipped with operating theatres and hospital wards. Music, workshops and fridge theatre will also feature as part of this year's festival. Organisers hope everyone gets involved, even those who don't consider themselves the artistic type.

NATALIE SPRITE, ORGANISER: I love that thing of people who wouldn't go into an art gallery, who maybe see art as something separate from themselves but will come to the waterfront and you know, see the fridge that their kid painted at school or that, you know, their mate painted out in one of the remote communities.